"Was it Busby?"

He paused for a long time, debating what the effect of his answer would
be. "He may of. I can't say."

Carmody restated his proof that Rita had been there and said: "One or
the other of you went. Now which was it?"

The witness writhed like a tortured animal, and at last said, "He did,"
and Mrs. Eli sighed with relief.

Carmody drew from him the fact that Watson owed Busby money, and that he
had vainly tried to collect it. He would not say that Rita left camp
with Busby, but his keen anxiety to protect her was evident to every one
in the room. He admitted that he expected Busby to have trouble with
Watson.

Mrs. Kitsong, who saw with growing anxiety the drift of the coroner's
questioning, called out: "Tell him the truth, Henry; the whole truth!"

Raines silenced her savagely, and Carmody said: "So Busby had tried to
collect that money before, had he?"

"Tell him 'yes,' Henry," shouted Eli, who was now quite as eager to
shield his son as he had been to convict Helen.

Carmody warned him to be quiet. "You'll have a chance very soon to
testify on this very point," he said, and repeated his question: "Busby
had had a fight with Watson, hadn't he--a regular knockdown row?"

Henry, sweating with fear, now confessed that Busby had returned from
Watson's place furious with anger, and this testimony gave an entirely
new direction to the suspicions of the jurors, several of whom knew
Busby as a tough customer.

Dismissing Henry for the moment, Carmody recalled Margarita. "You swear
you never visited Watson's cabin?" he began. "Well, suppose that I were
to tell you that we know you did, would you still deny it?" She looked
at him in scared silence, trying to measure the force of his question,
while he went on: "You mounted the front steps and went down the porch
to the right, pausing to peer into the window. You kept on to the east
end of the porch, where you dropped to the ground, and continued on
around to the back door. Do you deny that?"

Amazed by the accuracy of his information and awed by his tone, the girl
struggled for an answer, while the audience waited as at a crisis in a
powerful play.

Then the coroner snapped out, "Well, what were you doing there?"

She looked at Henry, then at Mrs. Eli. "I went to borrow some blankets,"
she confessed, in a voice so low that only a few heard her words.

"Was Watson at home?"

"Yes."

"Did you see him?"

"Yes."

"What did he say?"

At this p